


On Souls and the Scientific Method: A Treatise by Anton Sokolov

by Mertiya



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Also Anton literally writes a science paper in this, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Anton gets irritable, Daemon Touching, Except for the bits that Emily has, I mean it's the science of daemons but still, M/M, Piero has All The Trauma as usual, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 23:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11679489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Anton has a number of points to make about the current theories regarding the existence of daemons.  Dishonored, reimagined.





	On Souls and the Scientific Method: A Treatise by Anton Sokolov

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Natural Philosopher and the Nonlinear Terms](https://archiveofourown.org/works/870534) by [Rastaban](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rastaban/pseuds/Rastaban). 



            _According to the Abbey, the first daemon arose when the first man’s gaze wandered beyond the bounds of the world. He tried to disguise his sin, but it took on flesh to show everyone what he had done, and, ever since, humans have worn their sins on the outside. A person’s daemon, then, is the evidence of their soul on display for all to see._

_Even if I hewed close to the Abbey, I hardly think I would believe such tripe—absurd, to think a person’s soul so easily mapped—but such a belief is commonplace, especially among the uneducated, despite the various easily disproven misconceptions that arise from such a premise._

_There are other stories in Tyvia: daemons were the Lady’s last parting gift to humanity when the Lord expelled them from heaven, some say. In other places, it is said that they were the remnants of a dying race of inhuman beings, who bonded themselves inextricably to humanity to live on in some form at least._

_The most well-accepted theory among the learned—although it still bears examination, to my mind—is that they are pieces of the Void made flesh, echoes that exist, like the whales, both in and out of the Void. This theory still tends to circle back to the old nugget so often repeated, that the shape of a man’s soul may be seen by the shape his daemon takes on. I intend to show that such a supposition is no more than mere wishful thinking, arising from the natural desire of the human mind to impose simple patterns upon complex forms._

_It is clear that if one is to argue that it is possible to understand or predict the character of a human from the shape of the accompanying daemon, one must first begin with some frame of reference, and, here, already, such an assumption breaks down. The understanding of the meaning or symbolism of an animal varies wildly between different cultures: the crow, in Gristol, is a harbinger of death, as well as a wily and untrustworthy animal, almost synonymous with treachery; in Tyvia, especially in the Westernmost provinces, where birds are revered for their connection to the soul and crows are scarce, it bespeaks independence and courage._

            “I wonder what could possibly have brought _that_ example to mind,” Paiva drawled, nipping at Anton’s ear.

            “Quiet, you,” he told her, rubbing the soft feathers at her breast, an old, comfortable habit. He had intended to have written more on this treatise, but this was the first time he had been able to come back to it in the months following the eradication of the Dunwall plague.

            “Anton, where has the acid-resistant thermometer gone?” Piero’s voice called from the other room, sounding rather irritated, as well he might. He and Anton had returned from giving a long report to the Empress the day before to find that one of the newly hired housekeeping staff had taken it upon himself to reorganize the already perfectly well-ordered laboratory. Although he had been summarily dismissed, several items were still mislaid, and the acid-resistant thermometer was of particular importance to Piero. Anton hadn’t realized it had been one of the casualties of the unfortunate incident the previous day.

            “I’ll help you look!” Paiva called, taking off from his shoulder in a swirl of feathers. “Keep writing, I’ll let you know if we can’t find it.”

            _Furthermore, there is the supposed alignment between the sex of a person’s daemon and their personal proclivities. It is said that the sex of one’s daemon indicates the sex of persons that one may be expected to be attracted to. Although there are hermaphroditic animals and animals which may be said to have no sex, it seems difficult to reconcile the rather stringent requirements that must then necessarily be placed upon the daemons of any person who is attracted to multiple sexes or none. It is also one of the easiest hypotheses to disprove by direct observation, as, indeed, has been done on several occasions._

Anton didn’t bother with citations; he could do those later. Getting down the shape of the thoughts that had been bouncing around in his head for months would do well enough to begin with. Scratching his beard with his free hand, he smiled faintly as he penned the next several sentences.

            _The author of these remarks can, in fact, personally attest to the fact that it is possible to harbor attractions to multiple sexes while retaining a daemon of a single, constant sex._

Probably something to be taken out of the final paper, if only because whatever stuffy assholes at the Academy would be reading it would be horrified. Still—Anton thought wistfully of their faces. Well, he didn’t have to decide now, after all. In the other room, Piero gave a sharp, excited exclamation, which, with luck, meant that he had located the thermometer. It was the same thermometer he had had in his workshop during the four-day siege they had endured at the hands of Havelock’s Watch. Anton’s mind ground away at the memory as he penned the next paragraph.

_Leaving aside the difficulty of correctly assigning personality traits based on some nebulous understanding of equivalent nonhuman qualities, there are repeated accounts of the ‘settling’ of a daemon into a particular form being tied to either the necessities of the moment or some sort of strong emotional trauma._

_There is a contingent that insists that any person who can be separated from their daemon by more than a particular proscribed distance—a distance which, once again, varies from location to location, sometimes even from person to person—must be a witch; that is, one of the Outsider’s Marked. While it has been demonstrated repeatedly that the shock of separation can be enough to kill or drive a normal person mad, as with any number pertaining to a natural phenomenon, the actual distance at which separation becomes painful varies widely, having a mean value of something on the order of five feet, a minimum recorded of five inches; the maximum is not so well studied but there are accounts of bonds, not severed as the bond of a Marked is said to be, stretched to hundreds or perhaps even thousands of feet. Children are more resilient to separation than adults in general; acclimation during childhood can lead to a longer tolerated distance during adulthood, although it may also be linked to physical and mental difficulties._

~

They were going to die, Anton thought, almost clinically: the arc pylon nearly completed but the firing sequence missing, scribbled on a set of blueprints Joplin had accidentally left with Havelock, the Watch outside and the steady drum of incendiaries against the shuttered roof. Smoke filled the air, and Anton had given up trying to suppress the wracking cough shuddering through his frame every few moments.

            He and Joplin were curled up beneath one of the tables, backs pressed against Lysander’s tank. Paiva still fluttered in the occasional circle around the top of Joplin’s laboratory, but she had nothing new or helpful to report, and Anton felt her exhaustion growing as his did.

            “Do most people think you have a small daemon?” he asked curiously, letting his head fall back against the cool metal.

            “Y-Yes,” Joplin whispered, instinctively pressing himself further back against the metal tank. “I do little to correct the misapprehension; it is generally easier th-that way.”

            “When they get in, I could try to clear the way for you,” Lysander’s

deep, hesitant voice sounded hollowly from within the tank. “If you run very fast, you might be able to get away, and if they don’t know about me—”

            “Probably worth a try,” Anton sighed. “They’ll shoot us down, but it’s more of a chance than we’ve got otherwise. Joplin, exactly how far can you go from him?”

            The other philosopher swallowed. “I d-d-do not know, exactly. S-Several hundred f-feet, perhaps more.”

            “Well, if we’ve very lucky and make it away, and the whole place _doesn’t_ collapse, and the Watch _don’t_ kill Lysander when they find him, we might both survive. The alternative is to fire the pylon without the sequence.”

            Joplin shook his head. “N-n-no, I’d r-rather—w-we c-can try to clear them away, but I c-c-can’t—I don’t want to—if the p-pylon misfires—”

            “Then we’ll all be severed as well. Yes. Not a pleasant thought,” Paiva squawked, settling down somewhere near Lysander. Anton felt something rough shift under her claws, the brief flash of sensation gone as quickly as it had come.

            “Several hundred feet, eh?” A flash of discomfort from Paiva at the thought. Ten feet was their limit on a good day, and even that was uncomfortable. “Has that always been the case?”

            Beside him, Joplin shifted nervously. As if answering the question mattered now. Anton could have laughed, but the churning desperation to _know_ still clawed at him. Piero was a mystery that drew him in: a man with the hand of the Outsider upon him, but no Mark. A man who was smart enough to redesign his arc pylon—to produce an elixir to fight the plague much like Anton’s own. He wanted to know so many things right now, and he very much did not want to die, and it did not seem as if he had a choice.

            “N-no, wh-when we were young, w-we had a normal range.” Joplin had apparently decided to explain after all. “B-B-But—I was n-n-n-not well-liked. I had the f-f-fevers even then—as I told you—” he explained haltingly. “I believe—I was eight or nine?”

            “The Monitors came to Potterstead looking for witches,” Lysander put in. “We all went to see them. The people they suspect—they—they pulled their daemons away from them—”

            “We d-d-d-didn’t w-w-want to s-s-see,” Joplin stammered. He inhaled sharply, then coughed, a wet, rasping sound. Anton found himself shifting unconsciously closer to the other man. Well, what did it matter? They were going to die. “B-b-but we had t-t-to. Afterwards—” he choked again, and Lysander took up the story.

            “Afterwards, the other children wanted to re-enact it,” he said, voice suddenly cool and detached. “They took me.”

            “They _took_ you?” Anton shouldn’t be surprised, but he couldn’t hide the shock in his voice. Paiva made a soft, horrified noise.

            “It hurt like nothing else I have ever felt,” Joplin said, the stammer suddenly gone, nothing in his voice but a soft bleakness. “Like a knife—like—I do not have words to d-describe it. I—believe I s-screamed, but in truth I do not really recall. It is all a blur.”

            “Lady’s breath,” Anton managed, as Paiva murmured, “Lady preserve us.”

            “Th-they were laughing and telling me to r-run quickly, and I, ah, tried, because they had Lysander, but I c-could not run as fast as they could. I tried to keep running, but my legs gave out. I th-thought we would die.”

            “We did not know what to do,” Lysander said slowly. “I remember getting farther and farther away. Piero was screaming for me. I needed them to stop, so I—became heavy.” He made a soft rattling noise. “When they saw what I was, they screamed and ran.”

            “I r-reached him eventually,” Joplin finished tiredly, wiping his grimy forehead with the back of his hand. “And then we discovered that he could not change. And we nearly died because he had nowhere to root on the dusty road and he was drying out. I still do not know how I got him to the river.”

            Anton found that he had put a hand onto Joplin’s shoulder. “Fucking assholes,” he said succinctly. Joplin blinked up at him and then smiled, a puzzled, wavering smile.

            “At any rate,” he muttered. “Since then, our bond has been stable to long distances, although I must confess to not having tested the exact extent to which it is capable of stretching. That is one experiment both of us find—uncomfortable.”

            “I don’t wonder,” muttered Anton. From above, Paiva gave a sudden surprised cry. “What is it?” Anton called up in concern, but before she could answer, the two natural philosophers found themselves staring at a pure black lynx, the tufts of fur on the tops of her ears quivering slightly.

            “I’m glad to see you’re both alive,” she said. “Corvo will be here in a moment.”

~

            _Childhood trauma may also play a role in both the time at which a daemon settles and the form it takes. There are many recorded examples of a daemon settling into a form that was of use at the time at which the settling occurred, rather than choosing a form based on some sort of appropriateness or natural feeling. For example, a child whose daemon was stolen becoming a river krust in a panicked attempt to force the captors to leave it be, and then finding that it could no longer change from that form._

            The door to the other room opened, and Piero entered. “Lysander will do well enough in the new tank,” he said, with a weary sigh. “Paiva also appears to appreciate it: she has an easier time roosting nearby.” Focusing for a moment, Anton could feel the now-familiar sensation of Paiva brushing against Lysander, and he looked up and then reached out to take Piero’s hand in his. The strangest thing was how natural it felt.

            As the Royal Physician, Anton had grown used to occasionally touching the daemons of his patients, but even after the awkwardness had diminished, such an act had never felt the way touching Lysander did. And Paiva had never shown any desire to associate with another person or their daemon before, except for Celandine, Jess’s swan, and even that had been extremely rare. Yet by the end of the four-day siege in Piero’s workshop, Paiva was spending most of her time nestled on or near the part of Lysander’s rough bulk that protruded from his tank.

            It was, in some ways, beyond the bounds of Anton’s understanding, that in his fifth decade he should suddenly feel inextricably intertwined with another person. Even more beyond his understanding was how natural such a thing seemed. He and Piero fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. They ought by rights to have annihilated on contact with one another—certainly that had been Piero’s initial perspective—but instead whatever alchemy worked on human interactions dictated that they should together form a mind greater even than either of theirs alone.

            Leaning sideways, Piero let Anton draw him into an awkward, one-armed embrace. “How is the treatise coming?”

            Anton looked down at it. “I have a number of thoughts and they are making it onto paper. At this point, I have no idea if they’re coherent.”

            “It is indeed an intriguing endeavor,” Piero responded meditatively, then moved in slight surprise as Paiva winged her way back into the room and landed on his head.

            “Your hair is covered in gunk,” she told him disapprovingly. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

            Anton felt himself going slightly red as his daemon started carefully grooming Piero’s head; glancing up, he saw that his expression was mirrored in the other man’s. “Ah, I apologize,” Piero said awkwardly. “I will—”

            “If you’re going to be bedding Anton, you need to at least _wash_ ,” Paiva told him, and Piero’s red face went even redder.

            “I have b-b-been r-r-readying Lysander’s tank!” he protested. “I h-h-hardly th-think—and in any case, there has been no s-suggestion of—why would there be—”

            Chuckling, Anton tightened his arm around Piero. “I don’t object in principle,” he said, “although I might have been more circumspect about it.”

            “I—” Piero opened and shut his mouth. “That is. I d-do n-not—have much experience?”

            “Anton does,” Paiva said cheerfully. “I’m sure he’ll make up for any you lack.”

            “Get _out_ , bird,” Anton growled.

            “I’ll go see what Lysander thinks. I expect he’ll agree with me. Although if you two haven’t much experience, he may not realize how pleasant—”

            “BIRD. GO.” Making a vaguely indignant clacking noise, Paiva winged off into the other room again. “Fuck,” Anton said tiredly. He already knew that Piero was inexperienced and clearly nervous at the prospect of romance, physical or otherwise, and when he’d realized that his feelings for the man had grown—less than platonic—he’d been looking for a subtle way of introducing the subject, but Paiva had just destroyed any chance of that. Yet Piero hadn’t broken their awkward, one-armed embrace.

            “If—if you d-do not m-mind the inexperience,” Piero said awkwardly. “Then I sh-should r-r-rather l-l-l-like t-to—”

            “Thank the Outsider,” grunted Anton, rising from his seat and letting his pen drop. “Then I will leave the next paragraph until tomorrow.” Gently, he intertwined their fingers and, leaning forward, kissed Piero on the mouth.

~

            _The behavior of daemons is at least somewhat reflective of a person’s inner thoughts and feelings, but, to be fair, the same may be said of the behavior of the person in question. A person attempting a deception is not more likely to be given away by the actions of their daemon than by those of themselves. Still, the point remains that there are certain patterns of daemon behavior, much as there are patterns of human behavior. In most cultures, physical contact between two daemons or between a person and a daemon not their own have strongly intimate connotations._

“Aren’t you glad I got you two to stop tiptoeing around one another?” Paiva sounded very pleased with herself. She landed on the sheet of parchment Anton had propped against the pillow, and he shoved her irritably to one side.

            “You’re smudging the ink,” he told her. Beside him, Piero murmured and turned over sleepily. After a moment, he blinked pale, watery eyes and smiled at Anton, who said, “Good morning,” and smiled back. Then, naturally, he had to kiss Piero, because there was something so peculiarly intimate about waking up in the same bed, sprawled half across each other, and somehow, with Piero, it felt so natural. Inexperienced and awkward as Piero was, their bodies fit together as well as their minds did.

            Lysander’s voice boomed out from the other room, “Um, the Empress is here.”

            “ _Shit_ ,” hissed Anton, squinting at his clock. It was significantly later than he had intended, but he’d become distracted, first by Piero, then by his treatise. He had, in fact, entirely forgotten that he was intended to have a meeting with Emily to give her a proper physical examination, her first since Imogen had settled. Anton might be able to get away with a great number of things, but meeting the Empress stark naked was not one of them.

            “Paiva, go—”

            “Just put your clothes on, I’ll let her know you’ll be out in a minute.”

            Anton tumbled out of the bed, leaving Piero muttering sleepily and confusedly behind him, and grabbed the shirt and trousers he’d been wearing the day before. Fortuitously, they had not had the chance to migrate terribly far, and it wasn’t as if Emily hadn’t seen him wearing rumpled clothing before. He took a moment to splash some water on his face and another moment to stride back to the bed, bend down, and kiss Piero on the cheek, yielding to sudden impulse. Then he barreled out of the bedroom and down the hall into the second-floor laboratory.

            Empress Emily Kaldwin was seated primly on top of one of the stools in front of the lab table, her feet hooked up beneath her and resting on the crossbar. Her hands were cupped about something in her lap, and she looked up a little sullenly as Anton entered. A little tail flicked quickly between her fingers.

~

            _It is, perhaps, unsurprising that so much ink has been spilled in defense of the theory that the daemon’s shape marks the shape of the soul beneath. Anyone may come up with a conception of how such-and-such an animal is representative of such-and-such a trait. This is all the more telling when the animal in question is misidentified._

_One might argue that in such a case the soul is misidentified as well, but that merely dodges the fundamental subjectivity inherent in such a judgment. The driving point here must be that, given two hypotheses which answer the same question, it is preferable to choose the one that is actually measurable. Take, for example, the early settling of a daemon into a particular form. The common hypothesis is that such a form is indicative of the soul in a way defined by the person forming the hypothesis and therefore subject to such biases and cultural assumptions as they hold on the subject of symbolism. An improved hypothesis would be to study the necessities of the moment of settling and what benefit would be gained by adopting a particular form, as the latter hypothesis may then be studied and disproven with far more ease than the former, for which an alternative interpretation may always be presented._

_Consider a child who has undergone a traumatic ordeal, whose daemon has settled early into the form of a small mammal. The theory that most people will come up with if pressed is that she has been permanently scarred by the events she has gone through and therefore her daemon has settled into the form of something timid, emblematic of her fear and, in some minds, the idea that she will be unable to recover. The slightly more learned man may recognize the creature as a Serkonan rat, one of the only known venomous mammals, and then may hypothesize that, in truth, the child has learned well from her encounter that it is best to be overlooked until one can strike back._

_This conclusion, although a tempting one, to be sure, should be avoided, as it is, in truth, a trap no better than the original: it is still largely untestable and may be continuously updated in the light of new information about the animal in question. Instead, it is better to formulate a hypothesis that may be disproven. Even something as simple as the hypothesis that there is a minimum age at which a daemon can settle is preferable as a starting point. A somewhat more difficult but still potentially testable hypothesis is that in during each settling there is a strong emotional reaction of some sort and some kind of physical or tangible benefit arising from the settled form, although at this point we depart from the realm of the certain and into the realm of potentially fanciful. It is intriguing to consider careful experimental design to test such a hypothesis, but at this juncture it remains entirely untested._

~

            Emily screamed and fought, but Admiral Havelock was far stronger than she was. Beneath them, metal shifted and creaked, and Emily could feel the strong wind whipping at her hair and her legs. She could hear Imogen’s voice calling for Corvo, but it would only take a single step on Havelock’s part, and she would die, and Imogen would pop like a soap bubble—and she was tired, so tired of people picking her up and moving her and taking her and now she was going to _die_ —but fighting wouldn’t do any good, not anymore.

            She went limp in Havelock’s arms, and he looked down at her. “Let me go,” she pleaded, and in the stinging wind it was easy to make tears appear at the corners of her eyes. Imogen made a soft, squealing, pleading noise, and she glanced to the side to see that the huge, long-legged bitch that was Havelock’s demon had pinned her to the ground with one swooping paw. A fight would only injure her as well.

            And then Viola blurred into existence out of nowhere and cannoned into Havelock’s demon. Admiral Havelock gave a gasp and took a half step backwards as the black lynx’s claws tore into the wolfhound’s side.

            “Back away, Viola,” he gritted, hands tightening about Emily. “Or I swear I will drop her, I swear—”

            Imogen was shifting rapidly, sliding from form to form, and it hurt so much. Emily just wanted it to be over, just let it stop, let them be _safe_ , let it all _go away_ —

            They _shifted_ , and they _moved_ , and they _struck_.

            The wolfhound swayed on its feet, and Emily felt Havelock’s arms stiffen around her. She kicked wildly, and then his arms were going limp; the wolfhound’s weight was gone from Imogen’s back. She was falling, and she was kicking, and she was screaming—

            And then her hands caught in Viola’s long, coarse fur, and her fall was arrested. Viola lifted her back up, and she felt cold metal beneath her knees. “Emily, Emily,” Imogen’s voice was calling, and then Imogen’s soft fur was beneath her fingertips, and Emily was crying.

            She was sitting on a stool in Kaldwin’s Bridge, and she was crying. “It wasn’t Corvo who killed Admiral Havelock. It was Imogen. It was me.”

            She hadn’t cried at the time, had she? She had just been cold. She had sat in Corvo’s lap, and Viola had held Imogen, and everything had seemed very remote and fuzzy and far away. And now she was crying so hard, and Anton was sitting across from her with a notebook in his lap, with a strange expression on his face.

            “Well done,” he said, finally, and Emily blinked at him. You weren’t _supposed_ to kill people; Corvo had taught her that, but Anton’s voice was flat and loud and yet somehow sincere.

            “B-B-But—” she gulped. “It’s _bad_ to kill people.”

            “It’s also bad to dangle them off of cliffs.” Anton shuffled irritably. “Don’t go around trying to kill people, Emily, but if they try to kill you, then it’s entirely appropriate to put a fucking bullet in their skull.” Despite his angry words, Paiva was hovering in nervous loops above Imogen.

            “Isn’t there something wrong with us?” Imogen asked. “I can’t change anymore, you know.”

            Anton’s frown deepened. “A physical investigation reveals nothing wrong, Your Grace. Only the fact that you have settled already is somewhat unusual for a person your age, and that is consistent with reports of other children who have suffered severe trauma.”

            But there had to be something wrong. “But I don’t _feel_ all right,” she pushed out. “So there must be something wrong, but I just don’t know what it is.”

            Maybe she ought to be telling Corvo this, but he would get worried. She _had_ told Callista, and Callista had held her and stroked her forehead and told her that everything would be all right. That had helped, but the feeling had come back. She pulled her knees into her chest.

            “Your breathing’s fine, your temperature is all right, and you’re as hardy as a Tyvian,” Anton told her. “You did the right thing, Emily.”

            “Then why does it feel like he’s going to come back?” she burst out. “I keep thinking he’s going to come out from under my bed or somewhere and—and—do something bad to me!”

            Anton sighed heavily, then tipped his head to one side. “It feels like that because Havelock was a monster, I suppose,” he said meditatively, as if he were talking to someone else. “Haven’t you ever been afraid of monsters under your bed?”

            Cautiously, Emily nodded. “Not very often,” she said uncertainly.

            “What did you do about it when you were?” Anton asked her, and she shrugged.

            “Everybody always told me they weren’t there, and then they went away—I think.”

            “Well, I could tell you that, but you might not believe me.” Suddenly, he grinned. “I could also show you how to make some nice explosives that will kill any monsters under there, although you have to promise me you’ll be careful with them.”

            Emily giggled through her tears. “I don’t think it would be too great if I blew up the bed.” But it was nice to think of being able to defend herself instead of just being told that her fears didn’t exist. “Um, but maybe you could give me a sword or a gun or something?”

            A momentary flicker of pain passed across Anton’s face. “A sword is likely safer,” he said after a moment. “Guns and crossbows are better kept where you cannot accidentally shoot yourself during a nightmare.”

            “I would like a sword?” Emily said hesitantly.

            “Can you show us how to _make_ it?” Imogen chimed in breathlessly.

            Chuckling, he nodded. “I’m sure—” The door opened and a sleepy Piero emerged from the inner room, stopping when he saw Emily.

            “Oops,” muttered Paiva.

            Anton cleared his throat for some reason, and Piero looked up, turned red, and retreated. Emily put her head on one side in confusion. “Uh,” said Anton, turning back to her. “Yes. We’ll figure it out, Emily. Why don’t you tell Corvo to come see me as well, and between us, we’ll make you a very special sword.”

            The tears were drying up, finally. Imogen nestled into Emily’s hands, a warm, safe little ball of fur. “Yes. I—I think—I will feel better if—” She nodded. “Thank you.”

            “Well, I’m the Royal Physician, Your Grace. It’s my job.”

            But he was smiling, and Emily sniffed, and wiped her eyes, and said formally, “Thank you, Royal Physician. I shall return to my Royal Protector n-now, and you will be contacted l-l-later.”

            Anton nodded seriously. “Of course, Your Grace. Anytime.”

~

_Finally, however, I caution the reader that the minds of humans have long been known to show an effect on the world around them—that belief can make true certain falsehoods is clear, not only by virtue of the touch of the Void and the rituals of the Outsider, but also in ways that have not yet been elucidated by science but have nonetheless been reasonably well attested. It is not inconceivable that a complicating factor in any correct assessment of the mechanisms behind daemons is that the expectations of the person in question have some partial or even drastic effect on the final form, but, once again, it is not easy to determine how to test such a hypothesis._

            Anton capped the pen and laid it down across the page. Paiva nibbled on his ear.

            “Do you think y-you should get some dinner now?” Piero asked, leaning in the doorway.

            Stretching and crackling his neck from side to side, Anton nodded. “I’ll revise it later,” he said with a smile. “Not a bad first draft, though.” Thoughtfully he smeared a drop of ink sideways across the desk. “Not bad at all.”


End file.
